Every day here in Arizona numerous lawsuits are filed by Midland Funding against people like you. People who don’t have a clue who Midland Funding even is.

Midland Funding is a company that buys junk debt accounts from credit card companies and then files lawsuits to collect on them. Once Midland has their judgment in hand they garnish wages and bank accounts – check that – they garnish your wages and your bank accounts.

All the sudden this company you don’t even know is about to become a big pain in your pocket book.

The good news (if there can be good news about getting sued) is that you can win your case with Midland Funding.

And the fact that Midland Funding files cases in such huge volume actually works to your favor. Because they file lawsuits in such large numbers they prepare the lawsuits the same way over and over and over.

This means that generally there are no surprises when it comes to a Midland Funding lawsuit. Here in Arizona Midland generally hires one of two law firms to represent them – one in Phoenix and one in Tucson. These firms use the same court documents in ever case. They make the same allegations and generally attempt to back up their case with the same-type of exhibits.

When you receive your Midland Funding lawsuit, if you are like many, you may think all is lost. You will see statements, and affidavits, and Bills of Sale – all looking very important. But the thing is, when you look closely at these documents, what Midland is trying to pass off as evidence is really no evidence at all.

The truth of the matter is I have never seen a Midland Funding law suit that could legally support a judgment.

That is not to say that Midland doesn’t get judgments. They do all the time. Most because people don’t do something- like file an Answer to a complaint. Others because at the end of the day the final decision is the Justice of the Peace’s to make. And sometimes even judges get it wrong.

What You Need to Do to Win

So how do you win your case? Objections must be made to the court as to the type of evidence that Midland will try to support its case with. If the objections are properly done, the court should not allow any of the documents into evidence. With no documents, Midland has no case. That means you win.

The documents that Midland Funding will provide are all hearsay. Hearsay is nothing more than something that was either said or written by someone else and now Midland is presenting it to the court as if one of its employees said it.

For example, let’s say Midland bought a credit card account from Chase Bank. Let’s say you are in trial with Midland Funding and they have a Midland employee there as a witness. Now let’s say that Midland is trying to use its own employee to testify as to the accuracy of the Chase Bank statement.

The Chase Bank statement is hearsay. The credit card statement is a document created by Chase Bank – not Midland Funding. So to have a Midland Funding employee testify as to what is in a Chase Bank statement is like having me testify about documents created by some other lawyer. I didn’t create them so how can I testify about them?

If Midland wanted to do it right they would bring in a witness from the original creditor. In our example above they could bring in the Custodian of Records from Chase Bank and they would be permitted to testify about a the credit card statements and what it meant. But the Midland Funding employee should not be permitted to do this. You need to OBJECT!

If you do raise this objection there is no doubt that Midland will claim that these statements should be allowed by one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule. It is called the ‘business records’ exception. However, under Arizona law this exception simply doesn’t hold water.

The witness must be able to testify as to how the documents were created and stored. And they must be able to do this from first hand knowledge. The only thing the Midland Funding employee can testify too is what drawer the documents are stored in at Midland Funding. They don’t have a clue as to how the documents was created or the information contained in there.

I know that is a lot. But what it all really boils down to is Midland Funding witnesses cannot testify about documents they didn’t have a hand in putting together. And without this crucial step, they can’t win their case.

Have questions? I am happy to discuss it further with you. Don’t give in to Midland Funding. There is a good chance you could win.

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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